The background: Even before we heard the music, the artwork for the debut EP The Story by new trio King made us think of the beatific psych-soul, the sunburst dazzle of Rotary Connection and Minnie Riperton. It's not quite that far-out, but the music seems to nod to that era of celestial yearning, when R&B cosmonaut Stevie Wonder worked with what were essentially an electronic prog duo called Tonto's Expanding Headband and released albums with titles such as Innervisions and Fulfillingness' First Finale.

Do not confuse them with King, the 80s funk-pop group led by Paul King, he of the daft haircut and painted DMs, who sang about Love and Pride. No, they're three women – including Berklee College of Music alumnus and multi-instrumentalist Paris Strother – who write and produce their own material, a sort of quixotic R&B that has piqued the interest of Prince, Erykah Badu and Questlove, prompting them all to go into tweet overdrive. Basically, if you liked the "nu-soul" of the late 90s and artists such as D'Angelo, Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, and worry that the genre was knocked off course by the more machine-minded likes of Timbaland and Rodney Jerkins, then you'll love what King do. The songs are jazzily loose and fluidly constructed, with whooshing synths and brass, which eschew passionate bellowing for a more rarified form of harmonising that connotes the mystical and divine, voices spiralling up into the ether as the players (mainly Paris and the odd extra musician on the rare instrument she's yet to master) drift free from their moorings.

All three of the songs on The Story are excellent, even though their commercial chances are slim, if we use Beyoncé's sister Solange Knowles as the measure – her weird, warped R&B is the closest recent reference point we can think of for King, and sadly she failed to deliver, sales-wise. Still, who cares when the music's this fine. The eponymous opening track on King's EP literally sounds warped, as though it has been left out in the sun. The time signature is wonky and the melody off-kilter. It's a strange way to announce themselves: "Goodbye and farewell," they warble, ever so sweetly, explaining that they're "taking a trip … up to the land of the eternal sun" in a "mothership" – the tropes are pure cosmic Clintonese. Supernatural is Jazz&B, with a handclappy, hippy-trippy lyric about love, 10,000 tiny soldiers marching through the singer's heart, falling under spells, magic and all. Final track Hey is the ballad, but it's way superior to those lachrymose schmaltzfests that tend to clog up the back end of most R&B albums - this uses 70s astral imagery to convey a beauteous sense of wonderment and joy, the extended coda comprising two minutes of the title word repeated by the girls as though they're exhaling ecstasy - the feeling, not the drug, only you can't imagine the latter being any more heady or addictive.

The buzz: "This is not the last of The Story, but more appropriately, a very compelling beginning" – The Revivalist.

The truth: They've fulfilled their first finale - now for the key of life.